I do not believe institutions should assert copyright over students’ work, and use of the facilities or funds should not change this. The student is at the institution to learn and to grow intellectually, and work that they successfully complete provides evidence of this process. Students pay tuition, and that, as well as the institution’s mission, should be enough to allow students to retain copyright. This is a very controlling action on the part of MIT and others that engage in this practice, and does not provide a good model for students.
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Do you think there are grounds for institutions to assert copyright over student work?
My gut instinct is no, there shouldn’t be grounds for institutions to assert copyright over student work. However, if the work has been fully funded by the institution (and/or completed using equipment owned by the institution) then I imagine the institution may want to at least discuss the option of shared copyright.
In the example of an assignment in a course on entrepreneurship where the educator provides detailed feedback on a draft business plan, I still think primary ownership sits with the learner. -
How do you feel about others sharing copyright and/or intellectual property rights over your creative work as a learner?
Uncomfortable! If I have written or created something as a learner, I should be able to choose to share that work as I see fit, without having to consult with another party or parties. This is one challenge when publishing in academic journals which require you to sign away your rights to the work. That is very questionable practice, in my opinion. -
What are the impacts of ownership and copyright over learner work as they relate to the quality of learning?
I don’t think the quality of learning changes. You can’t take learning away from someone.
I agree that you can’t “take learning away” from someone, but wondering how learning might benefit from more learners exercising their rights to share their outputs of learning for the benefit of fellow learners?
I recognize that my ideas are not entirely my own. Who does not build on the work of others? To suddenly claim that my “idea” is entirely the result of my genius and hard work, that no one else had anything to do with it, and that no one else can ever mention it without mentioning me seems more like a borderline personality disorder than a legal principle.
To return to Salk and Polio, sure, he ‘invented’ something and that saved the lives of millions. It would not have happened - at that time - if it were not for his work AND the work of thousands of others before, with, and after him. One commentator said, “People worked on the polio vaccine like it was the Normandy invasion” . Hardly an individual effort.
Then we have the phenomenon of convergent invention. This happened with Newton’s invention of Calculus, concurrent with Liebniz (not patented, by the way) and with the invention of flight, concurrent with the Wright Brothers in the US and with Lilienthal in Germany, who, in turn, depended on the work of Berblinger, working in the early 19th century, in Germany. The way this story is told in the US is that Orville and Wilbur built an airplane out of a bicycle in their garage, “all by themselves”.
I don’t think that the problem is so much about credit as it is about profit. People don’t mind others making use of what they say and do if that improves something in the world. They do not like people to make money from their “own work” though. To take their idea and sell it. This extends even to creative commons which allows me to share my work on the condition that no one “profit” from it. This is a cultural avatar, not something that is universally true, not a real thing in nature. The indigenous people in North America did not accept or believe that anyone could “own” the land. This concept violated their foundational cultural principles, and appeared as an impossibility.
Again, I am conflating patent with copyright. Both are intellectual property. Both are ideas that are novel to our time.
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying this.
At first glance, I’d say that this principle - or policy - or whatever it is, asserts ownership over a student’s work in exchange for material investment of the university in the student’s education, in the form of grants, or resources extended in good faith via the “work environment”. These are arguments.
In fact, the university helps students by distributing funds it receives from outside sources so that students can actually pay the university for the services it renders. Without grant funding, students would not be able to afford to study and universities would lose revenue. This money is given to the university in order to enable it to continue to function. We want the universities to continue to function because of the service and benefit they provide to the community. Most are not for-profit enterprises. So, the university is only an agent, distributing funds donated to it to support its socially beneficial activity. You cannot “Invest” money that is not yours to begin with.
The principle that only students who receive support must surrender their work puts non-wealthy students at a disadvantage. It is a kind of tax on the poor, for being poor. Much of our system is like this. The wealthy are wealthy because much of what they have they get for free, or at least at a much lower cost than than others outside their class pay.
This structural discrimination - grant recipients as indentured servants - works to preserve the wealth and privilege of one class and to perpetuate social and economic inequality. It also violates cultural norms referencing the value of individual work and effort and the myth of just return for honest labor, so often cited when convenient, and ignored when uncomfortable.
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Solid post Mark, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
This relates to the non-commercial (NC) debates in the OER world.
Should we restrict the rights of individuals to earn a living using OER or not?
Another topic of conversation for educators to think about.
I believe that people should have the right to earn a living from using OER. The value of a product is in the value added that someone provides. OER is free so anyone selling it must provide something else otherwise the choice of having a product for free or paying for it would drive the market to zero.
Now, I might say, “It was my work and I gave it away, so anyone who uses it must also give away whatever they derive from it”. Here, I am placing restrictions on the use of my work, which is, in itself, a type of propriety claim, so my giving does not go on giving. I might say, “You must credit my work” but this again, is a kind of propriety assertion.
If I say it is “open” then it is only open if it is without restriction.
This is a tough one- I believe as academics we want the best for the students. Seeing them work so hard on something should only result in them having the copyrights to that work.
I do not believe there should be shared intellectual property rights over work (the IP should belong to the student)- however, if possible (cases where the lecturer assisted in shaping the project), there can be shared copyrights.
I believe the learners would be more pro-active and produce quality work knowing that they own the work. Surely, one can argue that they can also do the same knowing that they would get a grade from it- it is however not the same as ownership.
This is a great point. I think it gets at a fundamental tension/conflict in how some educators approach the act of teaching: if we’re relying on texts/materials/information given to students to be the value-added, then we’re in trouble already. From an educational perspective, the value added is in the learning activities, assignment sequences, personal experiences, motivation, encouragement, expertise, advise, guidance, etc. - not in stores of information.
This! I think this gets tangled up in the notion that the profit motive drives human actions. As a founding principle of (some/many) Western nations, it tends to inform a lot of decision-making. We’ve all heard the argument used by American pharmaceutical companies that if they don’t have a financial incentive to produce new drugs via long-term IP rights and uncapped pricing, they won’t be able to produce them. But of course we know researchers don’t get into research to become wealthy - they do it to improve the world, make it a better place, and perhaps enjoy an elevated/middle class standard of living, all of which could be preserved by producers simply producing and selling the product without a monopoly.
In this context, I think it does make sense for creators to act as you note, particularly if they perceive publishers/redistributors or other corporate entities to be entirely profit driven or to have a parasitic relationship to creativity.
As a blanket rule, creative works of learners should be exclusively under their own copyright ownership, unless there is an explicit, pre-written disclosure. Assertion of copyright ownership by institutions or grant sponsors of learner’s creative work is often stipulated when the foundation for this work (financial, material components, facilities, equipment…) or other contributions have been provided that would make the work otherwise impossible. This blurs the lines between the learning process and outcomes of a student, and the work-for-hire output of an employee or contractor. It is an unfortunate consequence of the power relationship between academic programs and learners, that often exploits the talents and intellect of the students, but they are beholden to the institutions to even be accepted there, and are therefore subjugated by them.
The sharing of intellectual property rights as a learner would be fine with me if those sharing the rights were collaborators and there was a pre-existing joint ownership agreement disclosed as a requirement of participation in the endeavor.
The consequences, as I alluded before, are access to learning in a power dynamic where the only way to participate is under the terms of the institutions which hold the power. Unless the creative work of the learner is explicitly their own copyright ownership (and CC-BY). On the plus side, joint ownership of copyright does provide opportunity for the learner (i.e. co-authoring publications with one’s professor), but without such would simply be exploitation. This unfortunately will likely resonate with many others, and my own experience when I was a graduate student.
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Institutions should not assert copyright over student work. Copyrights should belong to student. No sharing with institution or lecturer who guides student. Even institution provides fund to student, its not their own money. Lecturer is giving idea to student. Copyright is for expression and not idea. So, student must have ownership of their copyright.
I think this is a typical display of the murkiness of the ethics around education/starting a business during the course of education. However, and perhaps because I am technically still a student, I believe that education institutes serve as knowledge sources, but what a student decides to do with that knowledge and how they put it into practice, that is their own intellectual property. If the knowledge would be seen as the intellectual property of the EIs, then where would it end? Wouldn’t everything be jointly owned by the EI as they have provided the base information for whatever a student decides to do later on in their life. It seems like an incredibly slippery slope to me. Especially regarding an institution like MIT, where students make many projects/ creations that lead to future businesses. Isn’t that just the exact reason why HEIs exist? What their purpose is? To help students start their own future endeavours based on their knowledge gained at HEIs? I believe that exercising copyright over students’ works completely defeats the purpose of educational institutions and does more damage than good.
However, exercising copyright over works that the HEI themselves publish would be understandable, this would ensure a more dependable quality assurance. A student may explain what they have done in a certain project for a magazine owned by the HEI, but the project itself should not be copyrighted as well. It would halt innovation by students too much and it is a real shame that this seems to be a relatively common practice.
I will leave you with a footnote about MIT following my comments.
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Generally, a student’s work should be protected EXCEPT in cases where the RESEARCH conducted is funded by public moneys. In the case of MIT, this is rather convaluted given funding mechanisms in Massachusetts, private fundings, etc. are complex and sometimes hard to track.
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Students need to ensure they understand what they agree to. As a professor of leadership and open and distance learning,I made the decision thirty-five years ago to not ever co-write with a student. I have written with former students, but I chose to stay clear of any inference that I only chose to publish with a student to tap their ideas and ensure co-copyright/ownership. Personally, I have seen this abused to no end and if it were up to me I would fire any faculty member who does this with malicious intent. It’s not just unethical, it is simply bad manners as a professional. Having said all this I do understand that well-known faculty members who ensure both parties truly do share the work that they are empowering talented students through co-publication. It could be warranted. This would be on a case by case basis.
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Which of the twenty answers do you prefer? Universities that value reseach over teaching means learning quality for students will suffer. Conversely, who even thinks like this about teaching and learning? Only indirectly: Example: A student says why do we have to use that textbook, I don’t really like it but it’s by the professor so we have to use it. The fact is it may not be the best textbook the professor could have assigned so it could be entirely self-serving. And this never happens you say, right.
The unfortunate issue we face is that OER, much like distance education over the past 30 years, tends to be subject to unfair criticisms about quality and quality teaching and learning. However, whinning about it won’t change perceptions, high quality student and faculty produced OER will enhance adoption and sustainability of open content in the future. This to the dismay of those demanding copyright protections on everything under the sun will open content with attribution that is truly about openenness and freedom of choice.
MIT: Around 2000 MIT got a lot of press about distributing some of their content for free. Wow, everyone was impressed that a leading university would do this. It put MIT in the mainstream media like no other stategy. I discussed this with a VP from MIT at the time and asked him about this terrific idea to give away content. Paraphrased: He said, ‘we didn’t give away anything.’ The currency of MIT and its value are academic credit and our credentials. You get content but you don’t get the other two. The fact that giving away content enhanced their credibility, visibility, etc., it wasn’t planned, it was just plain luck. MIT didn’t need more students, more good professors, they already had most of the best ones in the world. They stumbled across a diamond in the rough. Today, with MOOCs and certificate programs you can earn MIT credit and a micro-credentials - even mciro degrees (not for free of course) I think, but in 2000 none of this was in their original thinking.
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If the institute is to further the progress of the institute in the are the student was working in, and to obtain funding plus the institute gave the student equipment etc, then yes I agree that the institute has a legal claim but not about sole ownership I would go with joint ownership. However if the student paid for the education and created the content with no input from the institute then I side with the student.
I am open to people sharing copyright over my creative works if the intent is to further learning, education, scientific advancement and not solely to make a profit.
The student should have sole ownership over their work, this encourages the individual to explore and advance without limitations. Institute are there for a reason but over time the reason has greyed.
Don’t forget the support of a $11million grant to help MIT with the first phase of the MIT OpenCoursewWare project.
This is a significant point worth highlighting. We must just get on with the job of OER adoption without worrying about the naysayers. A handful of dedicated educators can make a world of difference simply because with open licensing there are no barriers to accessing the materials. Those preferring artificial scarcity through restrictive copyright won’t be able to compete in the long run.
Many ask - How do you make OER sustainable? My question is how will your organisation remain sustainable without OER ;-).
Nice reflection Don!
This is a significant point worth highlighting. We must just get on with the job of OER adoption without worrying about the naysayers. A handful of dedicated educators can make a world of difference simply because with open licensing there are no barriers to accessing the materials. Those preferring artificial scarcity through restrictive copyright won’t be able to compete in the long run.
Many ask - How do you make OER sustainable? My question is how will your organisation remain sustainable without OER ;-).
Nice reflection Don!
I have seen in a renowned university in my country Bangladesh. The post graduate student’s thesis papers and other research papers are preserved in the institutes library for all without any copyright law. On the other hand, the teachers publications are followed the copyright law. I don’t think it’s fair- two different views!
Both students and faculty should retain copyright over their work unless they are doing something specifically in contract with/for the school. I also believe that there should be freedom of the school to be able to use the work of students and faculty done at the school (in a limited capacity) for advertising (bragging rights) in order to help them recruit, retain students, and draw funding from other sources. I think that if a school was to impose and strictly enforce their right to copyright over students and faculty it would definitely result in stifling innovation and creativity, because I know I would be less motivated unless I felt I was more adequately compensated. The public university I work for only gets 20% funding from the state, and this year there is a good chance it will be zero, so the argument that schools are completely tax payer funded is incorrect.